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20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

20.Glorifying and praising God This is another circumstance which is fitted to be generally useful in confirming our faith. The shepherds knew with certainty that this was a work of God. Their zeal in glorifying and praising
God is an implied reproof of our indolence, or rather of our ingratitude. If the cradle of Christ169169 “Si les petits drapeaux esquels estoit enveloppe l'infant Jesus;”— “if the little rags in which the child Jesus was wrapped.”
had such an effect upon them, as to make them rise from the stable and the manger to heaven, how much more powerful ought the death and resurrection of Christ to be in raising us to God? For Christ did not only ascend from the earth, that he might draw all things after him; but he sits at the right hand of the Father, that, during our pilgrimage in the world, we may meditate with our whole heart on the heavenly life. When Luke says, that the testimony of the angel
served as a rule to the shepherds in all that they did,170170 “Ad quam omnia exigerent.” — “Une reigle, a laquelle ils ont rapporte tout ce qu'ils voyoyent;” — “a rule by which they related all that they saw.”
he points out the nature of true godliness. For our faith is properly aided by the works of God, when it directs everything to this end, that the truth of God, which was revealed in his word, may be brought out with greater clearness.